This very attractive, orange-and-brown-brick,
16-story rental apartment building at 98 Riverside Drive has a
gentle curve along Riverside Drive and a sidestreet entrance at
320 West 82nd Street.

The building has a one-window-wide chamfer
at the Riverside Drive corner where it also has a three-story,
rusticated limestone quoin. The building has stringcourses at
the third and fourth and fourteenth floors and scalloped cornice
as well as a few scalloped window lintels.

Entrance

The buiding, which permits protruding air conditioners,
was designed by George F. Pelham in 1929.

It has 133 apartments.

In 2008, it was acquired by Northbrook Properties
LLC, of which Maurice Mann, the president of Mann Realty Associates,
and a co-owner of the Apthorp apartment building (see The
City Review article), from AVJ Realty, a firm owned by the
heirs of the Racolin family. It was part of an acquisition of
nine buildings for more than $300 million, according to an article
by Bradley Hope in January 17, 2008 edition of The New York
Sun. At the time of the sale, about 20 to 25 percent of the
building's units were "market-rate." The article quoted
Karol Stonger, the president of the building's tenant association
as stating that "people leave this builing feet first."
The article indicated that Mendel Racolin "was a Russian
dentist who entered into the real estate bnuinsess in about 1930,
according to an obituary in The New York Times on March
31, 1950" when he died at 69.

The New York Times
ran an article in its May 22, 2008 edition by Lily Koppel that
was the first chapter of her book published by Harper Collins
entitled "The Red Leather Diary." The diary was a gift
to Florence Wolfson, a resident in the building, on her 14th birthday
and she made entries for five years. The article described the
diarist as a "strong and headstrong New York teenager"
and noted that the building's management decided to clear out
the buiding's storage area in October 2003. Koppel wrote that
the building was "set like a misty castle overlooking leafy
Riverside Park and the Hudson River and the building felt like
a hidden universe awaiting discovery." "Under the maroon
awning, I entered the red marble lobby, pockmarked with age like
the face of the moon. Passing an old framed print of a gondola
gliding under Venice's Bridge of Sighs,the early August evening
light filtered through stained-gass windows illuminating a young
gallant displaying a jeweled coat of arms, with a dagger stuck
in his belt. He was carrying a locked treasure chest. ...The building
seemed to have an artistic soul."

The building has a doorman but no garage, no
roof deck, no balconies, not fitness center and no sidewalk landscaping.
It is not far from Zabar's.

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